Rittners School Of Floral Design
In Boston Presents....

How To Make A Heather Bouquet

Isn't this a lovely design??

In this lesson you'll see a lovely heather bouquet.

Heather is a wonderful material to work with. In our Day Course we try to bring this floral product in from time to time because you can really get great effects from it.

Most people think of heather as a filler material, to be worked in with other more important flowers. I find that heather is extremely versatile. Not only can you use it as a filler, but it also works really well structurally.

As with all bouquets shown our Floral Education Center we believe that on your wedding day you have more than enough to deal with in terms of your guests and details of your bridal party. We do not recommend doing your bouquets yourself.....or leaving them to any amateurs......You don't need the extra pressure on that special day. Leave the construction of your wedding designs to your florist. S/he will stylize something special for you that will meet your every need. Wedding bouquets really do require skill, and ability, not do-it-yourself attempts.....

We are showing you these steps so that you'll appreciate the skills provided by your florist and the labor required to do these.......

Contents of This Design

This design is stylized in a foam bouquet base, (a fairly good sized one to accomodate all of the materials.) Extra picks may be added to the bottoms of the stems to help prevent flower loss.

To start a design such as this one, the overall shape or form must be created. In this case heather provides the shape. The spikey nature of heather lends itself quite well to establishing interesting linear patterns.....It also gives us that lovely red-violet color which will blend well with reds, pinks and lavenders. We could, of course use other spikey materials such as snapdragon, liatris, larkspur or delphinium as substitutes. Each would impart a very different character to this design...We could also achieve the overall shape with pine, juniper, lycopodium, or myrtle, again, with different visual effects.....

Note that we have not used any foliage at all in this design.......So far everything is heather!!

Let's start filling in the center of this design. To do this we use some miniature carnations. Miniature carnations provide great contrast as the face flower plays off well against the spikey effect of the heather.....

We also take advantage of the dual nature of heather. We used the heather in the first step to establish the line and form of the design. Now, we use small sections of heather to fill in between the minature carnations...

More miniature carnations are added to this design, gradually angling out on the right side of the arrangement......

To provide an even greater contrast we start placing montecasino through the design....Notice the pieces on the upper left section of the piece........

Finally we continue the placement of the montecasino into the center and towards the right side of the design......

The overall effect is cheerful, dynamic and flowing...........

The really neat thing about these materials is that we could easily use them to come up with other shapes. For example, a classic cascade design, a round bouquet, a radiating circle, and just about any other shape imaginable could be stylized in much the same sequence, creating the line with heather, providing contrast with miniature carnations, and using the filler materials for heightened interest.....

We hope that you really enjoyed this heather bouquet. At Rittners Floral School in Boston we provide floral design instruction that includes a wide range of different styles and techniques. Please come and take one of our hands-on workshop programs!!